


Smile

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Read My Lips [56]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7516258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Sheppard/McKay, smile."</p><p>The newest wave of the Atlantis Expedition has to learn the unspoken rules of Atlantis and how the science department gets along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile

“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that name-sign,” Christine said. “Can you translate for me?”  
  
Dr. McNeil glanced up. “What?”  
  
Dr. Sheppard signed again, more slowly.  
  
Christine had taken a crash course in ASL - everyone who came to Atlantis had to, these days - and she couldn’t figure out whose name-sign was _smile_. “Who?”  
  
Dr. Sheppard finger-spelled for her. _R-O-D-N-E-Y._  
  
The scientists, like the soldiers, tended to call each other by their last names unless they were good friends, and Christine was still trying to figure out first names and get used to answering to people’s hollers of _Franklin_. Her name-sign was _kite_ , after Benjamin Franklin and the kite-and-key experiment. She was flattered.   
  
“Who’s Rodney?” she asked.  
  
“Dr. McKay,” Dr. McNeil clarified.  
  
Christine blinked. “Really?” His name-sign was ‘smile’? As far as Christine knew, McKay had two volumes - loud and louder - and two modes - impatient and furious. She was pretty sure she’d never seen him smile. Granted, she’d been on Atlantis for all of a week and in that time there had been two city-wide power malfunctions, a gate malfunction, and rolling blackouts while the city settled back onto New Lantea after its stint on Earth.  
  
“Yes,” Dr. McNeil said.  
  
Dr. Sheppard added, hands still carefully slow for Christine, “He has a great smile.”  
  
“Right,” Christine said faintly, though she signed _okay_ , because her crash course in ASL had not included much in the way of slang, to say the least. “I’ll just wait till Dr. McKay sends me those specs.” She hunched over her laptop and continued typing.   
  
She supposed, since Dr. Sheppard and Dr. McKay had been working together since the beginning of the Expedition, that they’d be friends, that Dr. Sheppard would have seen him smile once in a while. And if they’d worked together in Antarctica, before it was crazy, maybe Dr. Sheppard had even seen Dr. McKay be a nice person. Maybe the stress of constant war with the Wraith made everyone cranky, even though Dr. Sheppard and his interpreter Major Lorne seemed nice enough. Both of them were pretty easy on the eyes, too.  
  
Dr. McNeil, who’d been on the wave previous to Christine’s, seemed to be friendly enough with them. He knew sign language really well, and also he was one of the smartest people on the expedition, so Christine figured he was one of the cool kids, as it were. High school never really ended.   
  
The thing Christine liked about Atlantis, though, was that people took her seriously. She figured that since a couple of other people in the science department - Naoe, McNeil - were also young and prodigies, people were used to talking to really young people like they were adults, but she figured out fast that competence mattered first, age and physical appearance mattered second. Sort of.  
  
Christine switched to one of her assigned back-burner projects - trying to get the water desalination system to full capacity - when someone stomped into the lab. She lifted her head and saw McKay plant himself in front of Dr. Sheppard, hands flying.  
  
He pressed a button on his datapad, and calculations appeared on one of the Ancient display screens mounted on the wall.  
  
“You think you’re so smart, huh? Those projections are insane. Not only would they get the pilots killed, but we wouldn’t recover enough of their corpses to send home in a matchbox,” McKay spat.  
  
Christine flinched, eyes wide. Zelenka, Kusanagi, and Naoe immediately rose up from their stations and backed toward the walls of the lab.  
  
“Hang on,” Dr. McNeil began.  
  
McKay cut him off with a sharp gesture. “Silence, baby-face. This is between me and Doctor Crazy Hair.” He jabbed an accusing finger at Dr. Sheppard, then kept on signing and shouting. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing. You think if we capture the fallout from an exploding star, we can recharge a ZPM. But guess what? You’re not the physicist. _I am._ And if you think for one second that Woolsey will -”  
  
McNeil cast Zelenka a look. Zelenka shook his head.  
  
McKay was screaming in French.  
  
Dr. Sheppard looked equally irate, hands flying too fast to understand, almost too fast to see.  
  
Zelenka tapped something on his datapad.  
  
A message popped up on Christine’s screen.  
  
 _Top left drawer. Crown Royal bag. Arcade tokens. Give one to them. NOW._  
  
Christine stared at Zelenka.  
  
He made a _hurry up_ gesture, and Christine, keeping her motions as small as possible, eased over to Zelenka’s desk, opened the top left drawer. Sure enough, there was a purple drawstring bag inside. She opened it up and felt around, drew out a single silver token with a clown face on one side and _Circus Circus_ on the other.  
  
“Hurry,” Zelenka hissed, jolting Christine out of her confused daze.  
  
She tiptoed over to Dr. Sheppard and McKay and held out the token nervously.  
  
They both paused, stared at it.  
  
“You know,” McKay said to Zelenka, “I’m not Pavlov’s dog and those coins are not dinner bells.”  
  
“Take the damn coin, Rodney,” Zelenka snapped.  
  
McKay snatched the coin from Christine and gave it to Dr. Sheppard. Dr. Sheppard curled his hand around it and then grabbed McKay by the collar, hauled him in. Christine squeaked and covered her face with her hands, terrified of violence, only there was silence.  
  
She peered through her fingers, and - oh. Dr. Sheppard and McKay were locked in a passionate kiss, all open mouths and twining tongues and roaming hands. Then McKay stepped back and launched right back into his argument, and Dr. Sheppard was practically stabbing the air he was so furious.  
  
Zelenka looked flummoxed. “Now what?”  
  
“Now we call Evan,” Dr. McNeil said, and reached for his radio.  
  
Major Lorne came skidding into the lab thirty seconds later, gun drawn. “What’s the emergency?”  
  
“They won’t stop,” Zelenka said. Evan looked at the two arguing scientists, sighed, and holstered his weapon.  
  
“Did you try a token?”  
  
“They kissed,” Zelenka said, “and then kept on fighting.”  
  
Major Lorne stared at the calculations for a long time. Then he sighed. “Rodney.”  
  
McKay flipped him off.  
  
Major Lorne stomped on the ground. “ _Rodney._ ”  
  
McKay and Dr. Sheppard both flipped him off.  
  
“For hell’s sake, Rodney, those aren’t John’s equations!”  
  
McKay paused. “I’m sorry, what?”  
  
“If you’d looked at them for two seconds, you’d know they weren’t his handwriting,” Major Lorne said.  
  
McKay turned, stared at the display. Then he turned back to Dr. Sheppard. “You - you were deliberately winding me up!”  
  
Dr. Sheppard grinned cheekily, signed something that made McKay blush.  
  
Zelenka, Naoe, and Kusanagi blushed as well.  
  
Major Lorne sighed. “Both of you. Go. Get a room. For crying out loud.”  
  
Dr. Sheppard leaned in and pressed a kiss to McKay’s mouth, and when he pulled back, McKay was smiling.  
  
Huh. He did have a nice smile.  
  
Before Christine could observe more, Dr. Sheppard caught McKay by the wrist and towed him out of the lab, signing with one hand.  
  
“Welcome to Atlantis,” Zelenka said.  
  
Christine sat back down at her laptop and wondered if it was too late to ask for a transfer to the SGC Alpha Site after all.


End file.
